


Rewritten

by Justine (Sanj)



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Angst, Drama, Episode Related: The Sentinel: by Blair Sandburg, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-05-10
Updated: 1999-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 00:37:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/792012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanj/pseuds/Justine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years after the dissertation fiasco, Blair wants to change the way things turned out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rewritten

The day comes when you no longer see any truths but the ones you've decided to cling to. Reality shifts and flutters; we never really know what is, or what was; we just know what we remember. 

And in certain moments I see it the way Jim would see it, that waffling around with the truth is dangerous business, highly suspect, and justifications like mine are just so much bullshit. 

It's why we broke up, eventually. Why I left Cascade. 

Most of me is okay with it. Nothing lasts forever. I dug my MA out of mothballs and got a job teaching at a community college outside of Portland. Moving my way up the ladder, volunteering at the shelter. Jim got promoted to captain, got off the streets. We call and check in still every couple of weeks -- still best friends, just unable to keep each others' secrets anymore. 

Or that's the version I tell myself. 

I would have taken the badge, if I'd been able. But there wasn't any feasible way I could do it and still live in Cascade. The media finally let their permutations of the Sentinel story go, but my making it through the Academy would have given the lie to my retractions; it was impossible. So instead Simon cleaned up my credentials, got a few dozen recommendations from the friends I still had, and got me permanent staus as a departmental consultant. 

Which was fine, except that I was still a liar; except that I had made Jim's life a lie. On the surface, things continued as they had been for years, but there was the spectre of the truth -- a truth -- hanging over everything we did. 

We still went to bed together, like we always did, and then bitched about women in the bullpen, like we always did. I thought the subterfuge would go on forever. One day, he just put down his files mid-glance and stopped me while I was going on to H about some woman or another. 

"Chief," he said, "Enough." And somehow I knew he didn't just mean shut up, he meant, enough with the lies. And I just nodded and shut my mouth. 

"What then, Sandburg?" Brown pestered me. 

"What then nothing, man," I told him. "I'm making this shit up. I always do." 

That night, Jim let me fuck him, which was something we hadn't done before. He just climbed into the bed and guided my hands toward his ass; I didn't need to be told twice. But we never really talked about it. Never charted the correlation, if you will. 

Still. 

Eventually there were too many secrets and lies at the root of everything. Jim still couldn't testify with half the information he gathered. I couldn't admit to half the things I did as his partner. Neither of us could admit that we were lovers -- it was just another part of the whole mess, and we didn't want anyone examining it too closely. 

At least, that's what I told myself when I drove off. That what finally tore it was that we couldn't even admit our relationship to ourselves. I mean, objectively, two guys in their thirties who live together for seven years and suck each other off twice a week, with the occasional fuck on Fridays, are a gay couple. Or probably bisexual, since most of the time they're also chasing pretty women. But that's basically not what you call straight behavior. 

Maintaining any one of these fictions was just as important as maintaining any other. Jim was just a guy with exceptionally good senses that were certainly not superhuman. I was a harmless academic with some intellectual suggestions for applied fieldwork. We were just getting each other off, like guys do, but we both really, really preferred women. 

From the day he walked into my makeshift office at Rainier to the day I got on the plane to Portland was almost seven years. Longer than a lot of marriages. I've tried to analyze this before, and failed. 

But now he's hurt amd I'm here again by his bed, like we've done for each other a hundred times. The ex-spouse. The ex-partner. The guy he's still friends with, and isn't that something? 

They say he may not make it this time. Two holes in his chest; an entry and an exit wound. I feel like they have my name on them. 

I've been holding his hand now for the past half an hour, talking to him; I really don't care who walks in. 

I think if he died... I can't imagine it. I'm not sure I'd know how to live. Or if I'd want to. 

He still calls, every Sunday afternoon. "Hey, Chief," he says, the old nickname, and we talk about the nutcases plaguing Major Crime that week, and how Simon's doing as commissioner, and how bureaucracy has completely fucked up his sense of justice. 

He's not seeing anybody. Neither am I. Three years now. Somewhere in there I learned to discriminate. 

Steven's in here now, finished talking with the doctors. Prognosis isn't great. 

I'm not letting go of Jim's hand. Steven notices and looks me in the eye. Says he's known all along, about Jim and me, and about the senses \-- that I didn't lie. Says he appreciates my taking the fall for Jim's safety. 

For his privacy. 

And I'm sitting here in the half-dark hospital room, in this shitty vinyl chair, wondering what it would be like to write it all down: 

Jim Ellison is a Sentinel. 

Jim Ellison is my lover. 

And I'm sworn to protect him, and his tribe, by any means necessary. At the expense of my own life. Which, make no mistake, it has cost me. 

But what if we'd told the truth? Jim's truth, mine, ours, in all its wild cadences, in all its madness? 

I want to alter the world. I want to sit here and will that way into existence. 

"I love you," I tell him, eventually. Right in front of Steven. Breaking the silence. "Don't leave." 

His eyes flutter awake, slowly. It's gratifying. "I'm not going anywhere," he says, rasping it out in between coughs. 

"Neither am I," I tell him, and I feel his fingers curl, weakly, around my own. 


End file.
